The first round of Tandem Europe for culture and social innovation came to a grand finale at the end of January 2017 in Athens and Elefsina. Fifteen tandems from 24 European cities showcased their projects ranging from augmented reality artwork in public space to toolkits for alternative funding strategies, community games and creativity workshops for newcomers.

The focus of the second round remains on social innovation through cultural collaboration, however, we are specifically inviting public institutions and administration as well as civil society actors that are not primarily working in the field of arts and culture to apply. Furthermore, we are interested in exploring the topics of commons, urban and rural regeneration.

For the upcoming round, eligibility has been extended to organisations based in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. As before, organisations from all current 28 EU countries are eligible.

Finally, we are excited that for the programme implementation we can now also count on the excellent co-creation and social innovation capacities of 4iS (Aveiro), COMM’ON (Athens) and Ideas Factory (Sofia). All three organisations were part of the first Tandem Europe journey and represent different geographies, sectors and interests. Through the collaboration we aim to further improve our social innovation curriculum, intensify our participant-led approach, extend our network and test a potential growth model for the Tandem methodology.

We are looking forward to working with our new friends, fully embracing our motto: do-it-together instead of do-it-(y)ourself!